Thank you Keith Olbermann for being brave enough to say what I’ve been thinking and feeling for the past 17 days.
Keith Olbermann doesn’t care about the Super Bowl. Neither do I. Sure, I may go next year, or in future years, to cover the parties and red carpet events. But I don’t care about the actual game anymore. Neither does Olbermann.
I’m aware that taking the time to craft an op-ed and post a video saying that both I and Olbermann don’t care is in fact an act of caring.
Getting sick and tired of something shows that you do care, at least a little. And then when you take the time to tell the world about it, that act in itself shows that you care.
As the graphics displayed in Olbermann ‘s video convey, more people watch the Super Bowl for non sports reasons than they do for football. Also, 72% of Americans basically don’t care about the Super Bowl.
It’s perfect, because Katy Perry is the musical act of choice for people who don’t like music. Coincidentally, she also appeared on ESPN College Gameday this season, and that jumped the shark this year too. I guess Perry is a good cultural arbiter of when something takes “mainstream” to most utter levels of deplorability.
Remember the main stream is a stream because it’s so shallow.
This Super Bowl’s biggest news story was in fact actually a non-story. It revolved around a scandal that actually wasn’t scandalous at all.
It might be more accurate to say that Keith Olbermann and I find the Super Bowl “overrated, over-blown, over-hyped, and over-covered.” It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we find nothing compelling or interesting in it and we don’t see anything in it worthy of the attention it elicits.
You knew this was going to happen at some point.
If the NFL had kept it at one bye week, instead of two, they could have avoided “jumping the shark,” at least in the eyes of Olbermann and myself. Olbermann’s graphic completely destroys the boast made by NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus this week. Lazarus thinks that half of all Americans watch the Super Bowl. While it’s actually an overwhelming majority, a landslide in fact, who do not.
If there’s ever a Super Bowl to prompt one to check out from the franchise, this is the one. It’s being broadcast by the network which is by far the most obnoxious and annoying when it comes to self-promotion and cross-promotion. Every network does shameless self promotion, but NBC takes excessive pride in self-promotion.
The top storyline was media contrived garbage.
The top Media Day storyline involved a guy who didn’t say anything. (As if we didn’t know that Super Bowl Media Day is the most pointless endeavor ever conceived already. This year confirmed it. And the halftime musical act is someone who’s HORRIBLE at music.
There are a few needless things present at every Super Bowl, but in this one, all of them reared their head in the ugliest way possible. (until next year of course, when it will be even worse)
We don’t need 190 hours of pre game coverage, and every show on every sports network relocated to the site of the game.
We don’t need every sports network reminding us every chance they get about (see above)
We don’t need to hear “keys to the game,” “who wins this match-up will win this game” and all the other cliches that already beaten to dead horse levels for every regular season game as it is.
We don’t need the “how will this game affect his legacy?” bullshit.
We don’t need the “is this coach/player/defensive unit the greatest of all time?” garbage.
We don’t need every product in the known universe trying to force feed you bullshit beliefs about how their product relates to the Super Bowl.
You knew it was going to happen sometime- it’s called the law of diminishing returns. You can only take crass commercialization and corporatization so far.
You can go CNN while there’s a missing plane type of coverage if you want. However, eventually, you’ll take it too far and it will turn people off. It’s already started, myself, and Olbermann.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)